I get a little sad everytime I watch the movie “The Parent Trap,” because it’s before things started going wrong for Lindsay Lohan, and clearly the start of where things started going wrong for Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay Lohan’s life seems like a recipe for disaster: alcoholic dad + stagemom mother + young fame and criticism from the media = ISSUES. And the last year probably has been a disaster for Lindsay Lohan: she appears to have some kind of eating disorder, her dad is in jail, she’s causing girlie fights galore, she’s getting sued for slowing production on her most recent movie, she just got out of rehab for substance abuse, and a London newspaper just published pictures of her doing cocaine in a Los Angeles nightclub bathroom.

I personally won’t publish them here, one, because I bet you have to pay to syndicate celebrity photos like that, and two, it’s really disturbing. If you’re really interested, Google “Lindsay Lohan cocaine pictures” and “News of the World” (the paper that published the photos) and you’ll probably get a ton of links to the photos. However, I think the more we show and talk about celebrity cocaine use, the more “okay” it seems for normal girls…

…which bothers me. When I got to college this year, so many young women I knew started doing cocaine, because it’s so destigmatized from all the attention its been getting from celebrities. At school, people are really candid about talking about their cocaine usage and transactions, and I think that it’s recruiting a lot of new users for the drug. Or should I say abusers. I don’t know a single young woman who has done cocaine, and not developed a slight problem with it… and I know a few who have had BIG problems with it.

There was an article in Newsweek in February about how celebrities are affecting teens’ approach to sex, but I think the issue of celebrity influence on our lives spans much further.